Chosen to Die (7 page)

“And that boyfriend of yours, the drifter.”

What?

“Does Santana appreciate you? Treat you well?”

Her stomach dropped. How much about her did this animal know?

“Or is he just around for a quick roll in the hay, a hot fuck?” He said it all in a harsh, unrecognizable whisper. As if he thought she might be able to make out his identity. “I bet you’re a hot one, aren’t you? That you like it when some good-looking loser tries to get into your pants. Is that right? You enjoy the ride?”

“You’re sick.”

“Sick?” That seemed to bother him. “You won’t think so for long.”

What she wouldn’t do for a weapon of some kind, a gun or knife or even a baseball bat or night-stick, anything. Weak as she was, she’d haul off and whack him and send his black soul straight to hell. But there was no weapon and she was in no shape to attack anyone, and the beam of his light slid lower on her body, like a laser, trailing a path to the juncture of her legs where the beam paused, illuminating the reddish hair that curled there and feeling as if it burned a hole through her skin.

She tried not to think of the embarrassment, for then he’d win. He was doing this on purpose. Nor would she rise to the bait of bringing up Santana or her sex life. “You get your rocks off by torturing women? Humiliating them? Holding them against their will?”

He didn’t answer, just trailed the tiny beam of light down her legs.

“Why go to all this trouble? Why stage accidents and then pretend to help the victims? Why not just kill them and get it over with?”

“You just don’t get it, do you?”

“Enlighten me,” she challenged, keeping her eyes trained on his shadowy features.

“You’re a cop, Regan. A detective. You figure it out.” He stepped close enough so that were she not riddled with pain, one arm chained to the cot, she would have jumped up and rammed his arm backward until he was on his knees, or thrown a well-aimed punch at his throat to render him spitting and speechless, or shoved his nose into his cerebrum.

“Try me.” If she could just keep him talking, she might learn something, figure out his identity.

“It would take much too long.”

“What else do you have to do?”

He stepped closer and the penlight offered enough illumination that she noticed a glint, a slim little line of silver in his other hand.

What the hell?

What was it?

And then she knew with dead certainty that he held a hypodermic needle in his right hand.
Oh, God, no!

Pescoli freaked. She had no idea what drug might be held in the syringe, but she couldn’t let him inject her with it.

“Wait!” she said, trying to scoot away. Her legs were free. If she could kick him. Land a blow square in his crotch, or on his face.

“Don’t even think about it,” he whispered, his voice ragged, and rough, yet nearly seductive.

Pescoli’s skin crawled. Fear sizzled through her bones. She had to find a way to—

He sprang!

Like a cougar onto the back of an unsuspecting deer, he leaped onto the cot. She tried to move, but couldn’t get away. Pinning her with his knees, his legs straddling her torso, his weight pressing onto her bruised ribs, he held her fast.

Pain shrieked through her body and she cried out. Her chest felt as if it had been crushed, her lungs on fire, her ribs shattering. She tried to kick and squirm but pain crippled her and his well over two hundred pounds didn’t budge.

“No!” she forced out, her breath a panicked hiss. “Don’t!” She bucked upward, but to no avail.

It was too late. With his spread legs only inches from her nose, the scent of his sweat in the air, he shifted slightly. Dropped the penlight. Grabbed her tethered arm.

Though she pummeled him with her free hand, he fended off her blows with his shoulder and body, and his legs, his thick thighs covered in denim so close to her face wouldn’t budge. If she could bite him…

She moved, but he anticipated the lift of her head, the baring of her teeth.

“Careful,” he warned, staying away from her teeth, “or I’ll give you something you can really work on, fill that hot little mouth of yours right up. And you’ll love it.”

She shuddered inside. Thought she might be sick and throw up all over him.

From astride her he laughed, a brittle sound as hollow as all the caverns of hell.

“We’re going to get you,” she warned. “If not me, then someone else. They’ll never give up. They’ll run you to the ground like a rabid dog.”

He struck quickly. Plunged the needle into her arm.

She felt a sharp, cold sting against her skin, then the horrifying pressure of some unknown drug being forced into her flesh.

“You bastard!” she hissed and he laughed again, that low, sick growl, and he crawled slightly upward, forcing his crotch even closer to her head.

Her stomach roiled and still she swiped at him, her legs kicking upward.

Her attempts were futile, all her struggling in vain.

The penlight rolled noisily across the stone floor, stopping against the door, its tiny beam offering faint, narrow illumination. There wasn’t enough light to see his features clearly, just a glimmer of thin luminance that threw his face into a shadowy, macabre relief. His eyes were shielded by dark glasses, a baseball cap covered his head, and a beard darkened his jaw, yet she caught a chilling glimpse of his features. Rugged. Rough. Scratches down one cheek where she’d scraped his skin with her fingernails.

I know you,
she thought, her arm suddenly heavy, the pain in her chest easing as she started to drift away.
I know you, you miserable whack job, and damn it, somehow, someway, I’m going to get out of here and when I do, I swear to God, I’m going to nail your sorry ass…

Nate Santana snapped open his pocketknife, then sliced the twine holding a bale of hay together. The horses were waiting patiently in their stalls, ears pricked forward, dark, liquid eyes assessing him, only Lucifer showing impatience by snorting and tossing his dark head.

Daylight was still a couple of hours away but Santana was up even earlier than usual. Restless. His elusive sleep interrupted with dreams of Regan Pescoli.

Either she’d been making love to him, staring up at him with a naughty smile and arched eyebrows as he’d stripped away her clothes and made love to her, or she’d been lost in the darkness and he’d been running through a dark, night-shrouded forest calling her name, catching glimpses of her as she vanished into a thicket of brittle, snow-covered trees.

He’d woken up in a cold sweat, that tingling sensation that warned him of danger, ever present.

Using a pitchfork, he spread hay into the waiting mangers of Brady Long’s small herd. He’d already exercised the horses as much as the small arena would allow and now was finishing up with the feed, measuring oats, tossing hay, making sure the water was running into the troughs, that the pipes hadn’t frozen in this last arctic blast that had left so much of the state crippled.

Sometimes he wondered why he’d come back to this part of Montana. It wasn’t as if he had any family left.

You just had to get the hell out of California, that’s why, and Brady Long offered you a job and a place to stay.

He opened another bale, smelling the fading scent of summer in the dry grass, then forked it into the next box where Lucifer waited patiently, as if he were the most well-mannered colt on the ranch.

“I’m not buying it,” Santana said to the black devil-horse, but his mind wasn’t really on the task at hand. He was just going through the motions, getting through his morning chores, waiting for daybreak and the phone to ring.

He finished up and walked into the predawn darkness. Usually this was his favorite time of day, just before the sun rose, when the stars lit up the sky, the air was clear, and there was a calm to the universe, a quietude and peace that disappeared with daylight.

This morning, however, the stars were obscured and a bitter wind swept through the cluster of buildings that made up the heart of the Lazy L, the sprawling ranch owned by Brady Long.

A single security lamp shed an eerie light onto the snow-covered landscape and for the first time in days no snowflakes danced and swirled in its bluish beam.

Thankfully, the snowstorm that had ripped through the heart of the Bitterroots had stopped. At least for a while. But he still hadn’t heard from Regan Pescoli.

And he’d caught the news last night that the police in Spokane had taken a woman into custody, believing her to be responsible for the deaths of several women and possibly even the serial killer who had terrorized this section of the Bitterroots. His first thought was that Regan was in on the bust, but a second later he negated that idea, as Alvarez had phoned him after the arrest.

He locked the door of the stable and hiked across the parking lot, a hundred yards through the drifting snow to his cabin with Nakita at his heels. The husky, full of energy, romped through the drifts, disappearing beneath the mantle of white, his tail all that was visible of him, only to reappear, eager for another foray in a new direction.

“You’re an idiot,” Santana reminded him, but he did smile as Nakita bounded on the small porch, snow covering his nose, whiskers, and thick gray fur. Nakita’s long tongue hung out of his mouth and he scratched at the door.

“I know, I know.”

Santana stepped into the cabin, three rooms with a sleeping loft tucked under the eaves of a steep roof. This tiny home was the original house on the Long homestead and well over a hundred years old. That was before copper had been found and mined in some of the surrounding properties and the Long family had gained all their wealth and built the cedar and stone lodge tucked into thickets of pine and spruce and overlooking Milton Creek, homage to Brady’s ancestor who first claimed these acres.

Though his cabin was drafty, insulated poorly, Santana preferred it to the suite of attic rooms in one wing of the main house, quarters that had been dedicated to the year-round staff. Living in the big house was fine for Clementine, the housekeeper, and her teenaged son, Ross, but not for Nate. When push came to shove he would pick privacy over grandeur any day of the week. Besides, he needed to be closer to the livestock. And farther away from Brady Long whenever his boss decided to show up.

Heat radiated from the wood stove crouched in a corner of the cabin’s living area. Somewhere in the last fifty years the compact space had been equipped with electric baseboard heat, but Santana liked the old stove with its glass window to view the fire burning inside. He figured the exercise he got sawing up the fallen trees on the property each spring and splitting the rounds was worth it.

Never once had Regan Pescoli been here. Nor had he spent any time at her house. It was as if they’d had some unspoken pact to stay out of each other’s private space. “Stupid,” he muttered under his breath. They’d both tried so hard to deny what was becoming more evident with each passing hour: that he’d fallen for her.

He hung his hat and jacket on a peg near the front door as Nakita nosed at his food bowl and lapped water wildly from his dish. Santana skimmed himself out of the weatherproof pants and boots before propping them up on the rock floor in front of the fire. After adding more logs to the stove, he fed the dog, cut a thick slice of brown bread for himself, and, after slathering it with butter, bolted it down, then warmed himself up in a shower.

One thought circled his brain: Regan’s missing.

Toweling off briskly, his face a mask of granite, Nate tried not to succumb to panic. But he couldn’t quite convince himself that everything was fine, that she was just busy or even avoiding him.

He threw on his clothes and headed back to the stove, feeling like something sinister was at stake.

Like a gust of wind blowing the stable door open and freaking you out yesterday? Face it, Santana, you’re on the edge of paranoia. Because of a woman. Something you swore to yourself you’d never do.

Settling onto the worn arm of his recliner, he found the remote for his television while his dog was already snoring softly on the rag rug in front of the fire. His muscles were tense as he turned on the morning news.

What was it Pescoli’s partner had said when she’d called and he’d asked concerning Regan’s whereabouts?

“
If we knew that, I wouldn’t be calling you.”

Again that unsettling feeling crept through his guts.

Man, Santana, you’ve got it bad. You can’t get Pescoli out of your mind. What was it she’d said that she wanted? A relationship with no strings attached? Sounded good, didn’t it? Except now she’s under your skin. You can’t shake yourself free from her, and face it, you don’t want to.

His jaw tightened. It hadn’t been that long ago that he’d sworn no woman would ever get to him again. But Pescoli with her burnished hair that flamed red-gold in the sun and eyes that shimmered from green to gold had caught him off guard. She was athletic, smart as a whip, and had a wicked sense of humor that always surprised him.

And then there was the lovemaking.

Hard and fast.

Or sensual and slow.

But never enough, no matter how sated he’d felt after one of their sessions at a local motel. And never boring. He loved to stare down at her as they made love. It excited him to see her beautiful nipples harden and her eyes grow dark as her pupils dilated with desire.

He couldn’t get enough of her.

She was one helluva woman, he’d decided long ago, but one he’d never thought he couldn’t leave.

Now he wasn’t so sure.

Now he was scared to death, and Nate Santana wasn’t one to frighten easily. In fact, he’d sometimes wondered if there was something wrong with him. In a case of fight or flight, he always chose fight. And it had landed him in some tough spots. Hadn’t always been his smartest option.

Nor was getting involved with Pescoli such a great idea.

Everything about her should have warned him to stay away. She’d been married twice. She had two hellions of teenagers. She was a damned homicide detective, for Christ’s sake. Yep, he should never have gotten involved with her, and if it hadn’t been for the fact that she’d actually challenged him in a bar one night, first to pool, then to arm wrestling, and then to shots of whiskey, he might not have noticed the smell of her, the fire in her eyes that matched the flame in her hair, or the fact that she seemed slightly amused by him. Being attracted to her, playing her game, had been his first mistake.

Ending up in bed had been his second.

And now, his third: actually giving a damn about her. Caring about her. Missing her.

“Damn it all to hell.”

He drank two cups of black coffee, thought about carving himself a second piece of bread but decided he couldn’t force down another bite. Watching the weather report, only half paying attention to “more of the same,” he finally surfaced to learn another storm was on the horizon.

Great.

Time was inching by. He glanced at the clock mounted over the sink and scowled. Still an hour until daylight. “Oh, hell,” he said under his breath. He couldn’t stand not doing anything. He whistled to his dog and walked to the door where he began putting on the layers he’d so recently peeled off. “Come on, Nakita,” he said, as the dog yawned and stretched. “Let’s go into town.”

It was well past time to track Pescoli down.

After a miserable night, Alvarez rolled out of bed, stumbled through the shower, and dispensing with makeup, dried her thick hair, snapped a rubber band around a high ponytail, and wound the whole mess into a tight knot on her crown. She checked her image in the mirror, saw her eyes were watery from the damned cold, her skin lacking luster, her nose red.

“No beauty pageant for you today,” she told her image before she brushed her teeth and swilled some sharp-tasting antibacterial mouthwash inside her mouth.

She couldn’t afford to be sick.

Not now.

After pulling on silky long johns, she dressed in a sweater and department-issued slacks. Soberly, she looked at her reflection in the mirror and wondered what had happened to her. As a teenager, she’d been proud of her good looks, flaunted her slim figure, applied more makeup than she needed to her large eyes, high cheekbones, and full lips.

But that was a lifetime ago.

When life had been filled with laughter and promise.

Frowning, dispelling the image, she found her shoulder holster and snapped it on.

She was no longer all those things that had been important to her in her youth. “Hot.” Or “cool.” Whichever was in vogue. Even “tight” or “sexy” or “naughty” didn’t appeal to her. Probably would never again.

Which was fine.

Except that she was alone.

No husband or lover or boyfriend on the horizon.

“No big deal,” she said to herself while warming water for tea in the microwave. After all, she’d been thinking about getting a pet. Why not? Something living to come home to.

A bird would be good…maybe a parakeet or macaw or…who was she kidding? A bird? In a cage? Spreading seeds and crapping on newspapers lining the cage floor? Or perching on the curtain rod with its wings clipped?

Fine for someone else.

Just not Selena’s style.

She was fine. Alone. Matter of fact, that’s just how she liked things.

She glanced at her desk where more images and notes about the series of murders were strewn over the desk in the tiny apartment where she lived alone. No man had ever slept in her bed. She’d been in Grizzly Falls for over three years, ever since leaving San Bernadino. “A loner,” she’d been called, or an “ice princess.” She’d even heard Pete Watershed, a coworker, suggest to a group of officers that she “probably swings the other way.” Even now, feeling rotten, she smiled at that one.

If they only knew.

Not that she gave a damn.

Besides, Watershed was a dolt.

Alvarez figured that the less her coworkers and acquaintances knew about her, the better she could do her job. And she was all about her job.

The microwave dinged and she pulled out the cup of near-boiling water, then dunked a bag of tea into it. Her grandmother had insisted that honey and lemon be added to the tea in order for the concoction to “shake the cold loose,” but Alvarez had neither item in the small kitchen of her studio.

Orange pekoe would have to do.

“Citrus is citrus,” she told herself, blowing over her cup and gingerly tasting the hot tea. It nearly burned her tongue, but did soothe her throat.

Her cell rang and it sounded dull, as her ears were still plugged. She scrounged it out of her pocket and flipped it open. “Alvarez.”

“She’s not our killer.” Sheriff Grayson sounded disgusted. “Nothing adds up. A copycat, it looks like, though how she knew enough about the crimes to try and kill Jillian Rivers in the same manner, we haven’t figured out yet.” He let out a long, angry breath. “I was really hoping she would be the doer and we could close the case, but that’s not gonna happen.”